Melissa Korn

Katie Honan

Confirmed coronavirus cases shot past 1.2 million globally, as the U.S. braced for the most challenging days ahead for many of its hardest-hit cities.

Modeling shows New York, Detroit and New Orleans—and areas around those cities—will likely reach the peak of their outbreaks in the next six to seven days, White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx said Saturday evening.

“The next two weeks are extraordinarily important,” Dr. Birx said at a White House news briefing. “This is the moment to do everything that you can on the presidential guidelines. This is the moment to not be going to the grocery store, not going to the pharmacy, but doing everything you can to keep your family and your friends safe.”

She declined to predict how many people could die in the hot spots, noting that each place is different. But she noted that New York has seen several hundred deaths a day, and officials there have said that number could increase into the range of 500 to 700 people daily.

“There will be a lot of death unfortunately,” President Trump said at the briefing. But he added there would be less death than there would have been without the government’s response to stop the spread of the virus. The president in recent days has repeatedly urged Americans to follow federal social-distancing guidelines.

The U.S. has more than 300,000 cases, and New York state is hardest hit with nearly 114,000 as of Saturday. Upward of 8,400 people in the U.S. have died from Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, according to Johns Hopkins data. Roughly half of those are in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

“It is like a fire spreading,” Mr. Cuomo added on Saturday.

Most states now have stay-at-home orders, with governors in Alabama and Missouri announcing such restrictions Friday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday evening recommended that all people wear face coverings in public, especially in hot spots with high transmission rates. Officials urged people to reserve surgical masks and N95 respirators for medical first-responders and instead encouraged the use of scarfs, bandannas or other cloth coverings. Mr. Trump called the mask advisory “voluntary,” and said he didn’t expect to wear one himself.

Meanwhile in New York City, crematoriums are now running 24 hours a day, and the city put out a wireless emergency alert on Friday asking any licensed medical personnel to volunteer to fight the virus.

Tens of thousands from outside the state had already done so before that call went out, and they and local medical professionals who volunteered are now being matched with hospitals requesting assistance, Mr. Cuomo said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised people in coronavirus hot spots to wear cloth face masks, a $350 billion loan program for small businesses was launched Friday and cases world-wide surpass one million. WSJ’s Lorie Hirose has the latest on the pandemic. Photo: Ringo Chiu/Zuma Press

The governor warned New York is probably about a week away from its caseload apex, when hospitals, health-care workers and supplies will be stretched thinnest. The state now has 113,704 cases, up by nearly 11,000 in the past day, Mr. Cuomo said. The death toll rose to 3,565, a one-day jump of 630.

New York state has been struggling to amass enough ventilators, the most in-demand hospital item in the fight against the virus. The Chinese government helped facilitate a donation of 1,000 ventilators, which would arrive on Saturday, Mr. Cuomo said. He also thanked the federal government for its help converting the Javits Center in Manhattan into a 2,500-bed hospital for Covid-19 patients.

Mr. Trump said 1,000 medical military personnel were being sent to New York to help with the coronavirus response. He said he had dispatched them and they would go “where they’re needed the most.”

But he also repeatedly returned to the message that he wanted to reopen the country as soon as possible, returning to his mantra that the “cure cannot be worse than the virus itself.” He said he was considering creating a second task force that would focus on reopening.

Residents in Wuhan, China, where the new coronavirus first emerged last year, presented flowers during a silent tribute Saturday to those who died.

Photo:
Stringer/Getty Images

Mr. Trump also indicated there would be a “big decision” to make when assessing whether the federally recommended period of social distancing—which runs through April 30—would be enough mitigation. “We’re not going to destroy our country, we have to get back,” he said.

The president again criticized many states for asking for too much federal aid, saying that the U.S. government was there to serve as a “backup” to states.

New Jersey now has more than 34,000 confirmed cases, followed by Michigan, California and Massachusetts. On Saturday, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said the coronavirus death count now eclipses the death toll from the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, by more than 100. He asked people to continue to practice social distancing, despite the desire to congregate for Easter and Passover in the coming week.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Saturday the state would increase testing. So far, 126,700 people have been tested, a number that Mr. Newsom said isn’t enough. The state has more than 12,600 confirmed cases, the governor said.

The state has a new partnership with the University of California, Davis, and San Diego, to create a minimum of five to seven testing hubs throughout the state.

“I have a responsibility as governor to do better and do more testing in the state of California,” Mr. Newsom told a news conference.

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At the same time, governments around the world further tightened limits on social activity, as the death toll surpassed 63,900 world-wide.

In Spain, 124,736 people have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to data updated Saturday morning, more than anywhere else after the U.S. So far, 11,744 people are known to have died there.

But in Italy, long the center of the outbreak, the rate of infection is slowing. There were 119,827 confirmed cases of infection as of Friday evening, a 3.9% increase from the previous day, a sign that the strict social-distancing measures introduced more than three weeks ago are having an impact.

Italy’s official death toll, however, remains the world’s highest, with 14,681 people confirmed dead. But as elsewhere, many people—infected and dead—aren’t being counted.

China, where the new virus first emerged late last year, is slowly returning to normal after lifting one of the world’s longest and most stringent lockdowns. According to Johns Hopkins data, the country has recorded more than 82,500 cases—now surpassed by those in the U.S., Italy, Spain, Germany and France—and the rate of spread has slowed.

President Xi Jinping and other leaders gathered Saturday in Beijing to observe three minutes of silence as part of a national day of mourning for Covid-19 victims.